William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the 'Bard of Avon' (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 37 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. Scholars believe that he died on his fifty-second birthday, coinciding with St George’s Day. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608. He was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare. In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are consistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

Characters in the Play

CLAUDIUS, King of Denmark.
GERTRUDE, Queen of Denmark, Hamlet’s mother.
HAMLET, Prince of Denmark.
HORATIO, Hamlet’s friend.
POLONIUS, the King’s advisor.
OPHELIA, Polonius’s daughter.
LAERTES, Polonius’s son.
REYNALDO, Polonius’s servant.
VOLTEMAND and CORNELIUS, Envoys.
ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDERNSTERN.
OSRIC, a courtier.
MARCELLUS, BARNARDO and FRANCISCO, sentinels.
FORTINBRAS, Prince of Norway.
NORWEGIAN CAPTAIN.
SEVERAL PLAYERS.
TWO CLOWNS (a grave-digger and his companion).
TWO ENGLISH AMBASSADORS.
SAILORS.
LORDS, COURTIERS, ATTENDANTS and Servants.
GUARDS, SOLDIERS and MUSICIANS.
MESSENGER.
GHOST.

Act 1

Scene 1. The castle at Elsinore. A platform the battlements.
Enter FRANCISCO, a sentinel on guard. Enter BARNARDO.

BARNARDO : Who’s there?
FRANCISCO : Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.
BARNARDO : Long live the King!
FRANCISCO : Barnardo?
BARNARDO : He.
FRANCISCO : You come most carefully upon your hour.
BARNARDO : ’Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.
FRANCISCO : For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.
BARNARDO : Have you had quiet guard?
FRANCISCO : Not a mouse stirring.
BARNARDO : Well, good night.
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS.

FRANCISCO : I think I hear them. – Stand ho, who is there?
HORATIO : Friends to this ground.
MARCEL. : And liegemen to the Dane.
FRANCISCO : Give you good night.
MARCEL. : O, farewell honest soldier;
Who hath relieved you?
FRANCISCO : Barnardo hath my place;
Give you good night. [Exit Francisco.
MARCEL. : Holla, Barnardo!
BARNARDO : Say,
What, is Horatio there?
HORATIO : A piece of him.
BARNARDO : Welcome Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.
HORATIO : What, has this thing appeared again tonight?
BARNARDO : I have seen nothing.
MARCEL. : Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy,
And will not let belief take hold of him
Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us.
Therefore I have entreated him along
With us to watch the minutes of this night,
That if again this apparition come,
He may approve our eyes and speak to it.
HORATIO : Tush, tush, ’twill not appear.
BARNARDO : Sit down awhile,
And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story,
What we have two nights seen.
HORATIO : Well, sit we down,
And let us hear Barnardo speak of this.
BARNARDO : Last night of all,
When yon same star that’s westward from the Pole
Had made his course t’illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one –

Enter GHOST in armour.

MARCEL. : Peace, break thee off: look where it comes again!
BARNARDO : In the same figure like the King that’s dead.
MARCEL. : Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio.
BARNARDO : Looks a not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.
HORATIO : Most like; it harrows me with fear and wonder.
BARNARDO : It would be spoke to.
MARCEL. : Question it, Horation.
HORATIO : What art thou that usurp’st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? By heaven, I charge thee speak!
MARCEL. : It is offended.
BARNARDO : See, it stalks away.
HORATIO : Stay, speak, speak: I charge thee speak!

[Exit Ghost.

MARCEL. : ’Tis gone and will not answer.
BARNARDO : How now, Horatio? You tremble and look pale.
Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on’t?
HORATIO : Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.
MARCEL. : Is it not like the King?
HORATIO : As thou art to thyself.
Such was the very armour he had on,
When he the ambitious Norway combated.
So frowned he once, when in an angry parle
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
’Tis strange.
MARCEL. : Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.
HORATIO : In what particular thought to work I know not,
But, in the gross and scope of mine opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
MARCEL. : Good now, sit down, and tell me he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land;
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week?
What might be tóward that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day?
Who is’t that can inform me?
HORATIO : That can I –
At least the whisper goes so: our last King,
Whose image even but now appeared to us,
Was (as you know) by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
(For so this side of our known world esteemed him)
Did slay this Fortinbras, who by a sealed compáct,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit (with his life) all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror,
Against the which a moiety competent
Was gagèd by our King, which had returned
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same cov’nant,
And carriage of the article designed,
His fell to Hamlet. Now sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimprovèd mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Sharked up a list of lawless resolute
For food and diet to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in’t, which is no other
(As it doth well appear unto our state)
But to recover of us by strong hand
And terms compulsatory those foresaid lands
So by his father lost. And this (I take it)
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch, and the chief head
Of this post-haste and rummage in the land.
BARNARDO : I think it be no other but e’en so;
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armèd through our watch so like the King
That was and is the question of these wars.
HORATIO : A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;
Asters with trains of fire shed dews of blood,
Disastering the sun; and the moist star,
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of fierce events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Upon our climatures and countrymen.

Enter GHOST.

But soft, behold, lo where it comes again!
I’ll cross it though it blast me. [He spreads his arms.
Stay, illusion:
If thou hast any sound or use of voice,
Speak to me.
If there be any good thing to be done
That may to thee do ease, and grace to me,
Speak to me.
If thou art privy to thy country’s fate,
Which happily foreknowing may avoid,
O speak.
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which they say you spirits oft walk in death,

[The cock crows.

Speak of it – stay and speak! Stop it, Marcellus!
MARCEL. : Shall I strike at it with my partisan?
HORATIO : Do if it will not stand.
BARNARDO : ’Tis here!
HORATIO : ’Tis here! [Exit Ghost.
MARCEL. : ’Tis gone!
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence,
For it is as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.
BARNARDO : It was about to speak when the cock crew.
HORATIO : And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard,
The cock that is the trumpet to the morn
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day, and, at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
Th’extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine; and of the truth herein
This present object made probation.
MARCEL. : It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then (they say) no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is that time.
HORATIO : So have I heard, and do in part believe it.
But look, the morn in russet mantle clad
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.
Break we our watch up, and by my advice
Let us impart what we have seen tonight
Unto young Hamlet; for upon my life
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?
MARCEL. : Let’s do’t, I pray, and I this morning know
Where we shall find him most convenient.

[Exeunt.

Scene 2. The Council Chamber in the castle.
A flourish of trumpets. Enter CLAUDIUS, King of Denmark, GERTRUDE the Queen, Prince HAMLET (dressed in black), and COUNCILLORS including POLONIUS and his son LAERTES, VOLTEMAND and CORNELIUS.

KING : Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature,
That we with wisest sorrow think on him
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our Queen,
Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy,
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,
Taken to wife. Nor have we herein barred
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along: for all, our thanks.
Now follows that you know: young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleaguèd with this dream of his advantage –
He hath not failed to pester us with message
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother. So much for him.
Now for ourself, and for this time of meeting,
Thus much the business is. We have here writ
To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras –
Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears
Of this his nephew’s purpose – to suppress
His further gait herein, in that the levies,
The lists and full proportions are all made
Out of his subject; and we here dispatch
You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand,
For bearers of this greeting to old Norway,
Giving to you no further personal power
To business with the King, more than the scope
Of these dilated articles allow.
Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.
CORNEL., VOLTEM. : In that, and all things, will we show our duty.
KING : We doubt it nothing; heartily farewell.

[Exeunt Voltemand and Cornelius.

And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you?
You told us of some suit: what is’t, Laertes?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane
And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
What wouldst thou have, Laertes?
LAERTES : My dread lord,
Your leave and favour to return to France,
From whence though willingly I came to Denmark
To show my duty in your coronation,
Yet now I must confess, that duty done,
My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France,
And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.
KING : Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?
POLONIUS : He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
By laboursome petition, and at last
Upon his will I sealed my hard consent.
I do beseech you give him leave to go.
KING : Take thy fair hour, Laertes, time be thine,
And thy best graces spend it at thy will.
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son –
HAMLET : A little more than kin, and less than kind.
KING : How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
HAMLET : Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun.
QUEEN : Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids,
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know’st ’tis common, all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
HAMLET : Ay, madam, it is common.
QUEEN : If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?
HAMLET : ‘Seems’, madam? Nay, it is; I know not ‘seems’.
’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passes show;
These, but the trappings and the suits of woe.
KING : ’Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father;
But you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his; and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow. But to persèver
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness. ’Tis unmanly grief:
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschooled
For, what we know must be, and is an common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we in our peevish opposition
Take it to heart? Fie, ’tis a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd, whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse till he that died today,
‘This must be so’. We pray you throw to earth
This unprevailing woe, and think of us
As of a father; for let the world take note,
You are the most immediate to our throne,
And with no less nobility of love
Than that which dearest father bears his son
Do I impart toward you. For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire,
And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
QUEEN : Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet;
I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg.
HAMLET : I shall in all my best obey you, madam.
KING : Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply.
Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come.
This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart; in grace whereof,
No jocund health that Denmark drinks today,
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the King’s rouse the heaven shall bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.

[Flourish. Exeunt all but Hamlet.

HAMLET : O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting and not fixed
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter. O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t, ah fie, ’tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead – nay not so much, not two –
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on, and yet within a month –
Let me not think on’t: frailty, thy name is woman –
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body,
Like Niobe all tears, why she, even she –
O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer – married with my uncle,
My father’s brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules; within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her gallèd eyes,
She married. O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not (not it cannot come to) good.
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

Enter HORATIO, MARCELLUS and BARNARDO.

HORATIO : Hail to your lordship!
HAMLET : I am glad to see you well.
Horatio – or I do forget myself!
HORATIO : The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.
HAMLET : Sir, my good friends, I’ll change that name with you.
And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio? –
Marcellus.
MARCEL. : My good lord.
HAMLET : I am very glad to see you. [To Barnardo:] Good even, sir.
– But what in faith make you from Wittenberg?
HORATIO : A truant disposition, good my lord.
HAMLET : I would not hear your enemy say so,
Nor shall you do mine ear that violence
To make it truster of your own report
Against yourself. I know you are no truant.
But what is your affair in Elsinore?
We’ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.
HORATIO : My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.
HAMLET : I prithee do not mock me, fellow-student;
I think it was to see my mother’s wedding.
HORATIO : Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.
HAMLET : Thrift, thrift, Horatio: the funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Ere I had ever seen that day, Horatio.
My father – methinks I see my father –
HORATIO : Where, my lord?
HAMLET : In my mind’s eye, Horatio.
HORATIO : I saw him once. He was a goodly king –
HAMLET : He was a man, take him for all in all:
I shall not look upon his like again.
HORATIO : My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.
HAMLET : Saw, who?
HORATIO : My lord, the King your father.
HAMLET : The King my father!
HORATIO : Season your admiration for a while
With an attent ear, till I may deliver,
Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
This marvel to you.
HAMLET : For God’s love let me hear!
HORATIO : Two nights together had these gentlemen,
Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch
In the dead waste and middle of the night,
Been thus encountered. A figure like your father,
Armed at all points exactly, cap-à-pie,
Appears before them, and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately by them; thrice he walked
By their oppressed and fear-surprisèd eyes
Within his truncheon’s length, whilst they, distilled
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me
In dreadful secrecy impart they did,
And I with them the third night kept the watch,
Where, as they had delivered, both in time,
Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
The apparition comes. I knew your father;
These hands are not more like.
HAMLET : But where was this?
MARCEL. : My lord, upon the platform where we watch.
HAMLET : Did you not speak to it?
HORATIO : My lord, I did,
But answer made it none. Yet once methought
It lifted up its head, and did address
Itself to motion like as it would speak;
But even then the morning cock crew loud,
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away
And vanished from our sight.
HAMLET : ’Tis very strange.
HORATIO : As I do live, my honoured lord, ’tis true;
And we did think it writ down in our duty
To let you know of it.
HAMLET : Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
Hold you the watch tonight?
ALL : We do, my lord.
HAMLET : Armed, say you?
ALL : Armed, my lord.
HAMLET : From top to toe?
ALL : My lord, from head to foot.
HAMLET : Then saw you not his face.
HORATIO : O yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up.
HAMLET : What, looked he frowningly?
HORATIO : A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
HAMLET : Pale, or red?
HORATIO : Nay, very pale.
HAMLET : And fixed his eyes upon you?
HORATIO : Most constantly.
HAMLET : I would I had been there.
HORATIO : It would have much amazed you.
HAMLET : Very like, very like. Stayed it long?
HORATIO : While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.
MARCEL., BARN. : Longer, longer.
HORATIO : Not when I saw’t.
HAMLET : His beard was grizzled, no?
HORATIO : It was, as I have seen it in his life,
A sable silvered.
HAMLET : I will watch tonight:
Perchance ’twill walk gain.
HORATIO : I war’nt it will.
HAMLET : If it assume my noble father’s person,
I’ll speak to it though hell itself should gape
And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
If you have hitherto concealed this sight,
Let it be tenable in your silence still;
And whatsoever else shall hap tonight,
Give it an understanding but no tongue.
I will requite your loves; so, fare you well:
Upon the platform ’twixt eleven and twelve
I’ll visit you.
ALL : Our duty to your honour.
HAMLET : Your loves, as mine to you. Farewell.

[Exeunt.

My father’s spirit in arms? All is not well;
I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come.
Till then, sit still my soul; foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

[Exit.